A Lot of Generals Should Be Fired

by paradox

The toobz, as the valiant emptywheel stated this morning, are chock full of calls to fire one General McChrystal, an obnoxious insubordinate in a losing war. I don’t necessarily care if this fool is fired in the whole horror show, what the country needs is to get the hell out of Afghanistan. Today.

I do have two relevant observations, the first derived from emptywheel:

He has always succeeded in–as he himself points out in the article–ordering Special Ops guys to kill many targets but then publicly scolding them the next day so as to maintain the fiction that he’s really supporting a less lethal strategy.

General McChrystal, I actually took you as a man of honor and believed you when your stated the highest priority of US forces was to stop killing Afghan civilians. I thought it was a dubious, naïve proposition, but at least it had ethical and tactical merit. Now I find out you were lying this the whole time, the corpses of innocent human beings littering all that we stand for as country, sick deceit and manipulation of the little people our only reward. Along with the coffins.

The other telling point in all this is that not only should McChrystal be fired immediately, so should a lot of his brethren general officers. Our dear Republican Secretary of War (that’s what the egotist calls himself) has pointed out many times the general officer corps in the Army is seriously bloated and over-staffed, 1990’s force reductions of 40% only resulted in a 20% reduction in generals.

This has had a very serious effect on junior officer retention and advancement. When the holy O-6 slots finally, at last open up they turn them down and quit the service. Men of honor will not sacrifice their souls and utility—not with the lives of their men at stake—to become desperate paper shufflers in a catty tea-party game of Army general officer life.

Anyone who has just read me briefly knows I consider both the Iraq and Afghanistan wars to be screaming tragedies of failure that should be abandoned instantly, right now. It should also be noted I’m a US Navy wartime vet who believes in the proper implementation of truly scoped defense needs proportionate to our real threats.

Our people in the Army and Marine Corps services so desperately need rest and equipment upgrades that work for our people in the field. We so need to come home and heal.

One supposes this point is eternally lost among the bloated US Army general officer corps, it seems. Perhaps their PowerPoint lieutenant jockeys are fervently jacking up analyses on who forget to paint the rocks. I guess.